One of the major problems in
democratic societies is the confusion between needs and
rights. By helping us understand our emotional needs,
emotional intelligence helps us distinguish one from the
other. For example, I have a need for sex and intimacy.
But few would claim that I have a right to either of
these. I also have a need to protect myself. Yet in
certain countries I have the "right" to own
deadly weapons, while in others I do not. The situation
becomes even more complicated when we consider our
desires as opposed to our needs. For example, I may
desire a certain standard of living, but I do not have a
right to any lifestyle I choose--instead I must earn it.
So who decides what is a "right," as opposed to
a need or a desire?

A need or a desire becomes a
"right" only when one group of people decide
that it is a right. In democracies, the majority rules,
at least theoretically. If, for example, the majority
rules that they have a "right" to something,
they can literally force others to give it to them. They
simply elect leaders who pass laws accordingly. When
these laws are put into effect, the full power of the
government, which includes deadly force if necessary,
enforces these laws.

There are at least two problems
with this process of transferring a need to a right:

1. The concept of
responsibility is severely compromised.

2. The needs of the minority
are neglected in favor of the needs of the majority.

Responsibility is compromised
because once something becomes a "right," one
no longer has to do anything further to earn it. When a
person believes he has a right to something, he feels
entitled to it. If he does not receive this entitlement,
he believes he has been wronged, cheated, victimized,
deprived, and treated unfairly. In most cases, he tends
to place blame on the person or group which he believes
is responsible for depriving him of his
"rights." Logically, he then focuses his energy
on asserting his "rights." He does this by
making demands and by trying to coerce, manipulate or in
some way change the person or persons he holds
responsible for his unhappiness.

Since changing others is difficult,
if not impossible, he sets himself up to feel frustrated,
defeated, controlled, dependent, victimized, and
powerless. All of these are direct opposites of the
positive feelings needed for happiness. They are all also
the opposite of that required for high self-esteem and
self-reliance. When a low EQ person feels such negative
feelings, he does not know how to soothe himself. Over
time, he may feel resentful, bitter, jealous, envious,
hopeless, despondent, or depressed. (This brings to mind
Freud's definition of depression as "anger turned
inward.") Or the "victim" may take out his
negative feelings and frustrations on others, either
those close to him or total strangers. He may also look
for other ways to fulfill his need to feel powerful and
in control. In the extreme case, he may turn to rage,
random violence, and destruction. In the long run, all of
this is not only anti-social, but self-destructive.

The second problem mentioned above
is the neglect of the minority's needs. Again, this is
particularly relevant to those who are both more
intelligent and more sensitive, since they are, by
definition, in the minority. In the long run, the social
conventions, the laws, the values, the beliefs, and the
definition of "rights" will all reflect the
majority's needs and desires. To those in the minority,
all of this has the potential to cause feelings of being
left out, isolated, misunderstood, unsupported,
controlled, invalidated,
rejected, etc.

The result of these problems is
that there will be an increase in irresponsible behavior
and a compounding of the natural tendency for groups to
subdivide. This subdivision causes them to insulate and
isolate themselves. The more the groups separate, the
more they misunderstand, fear, resent, and compete with
one another. As long as resources are plentiful, this may
be a tolerable situation, but if resources become scarce,
or even if they are perceived to be scarce, the
competition becomes intense and ultimately leads to
violence and warfare. What is needed, then, is something
to reunite the groups by emphasizing their commonalities.
A deeper understanding of our universal human emotional needs is probably a good place to start and it is
probably much more helpful than relying on arbitrary
declarations of "rights."

What happens when a person's needs
and rights conflict? For example, what if I have a need
to ask questions and to understand but I have no legal
"rights" to question them. For example,
questioning a police officer or a judge about their
feelings, beliefs, or reasons for their decisions?

What happens when a child has a
need to understand but his "right" to question
the teacher runs out when her patience runs out? (Or when
she starts to feel too insecure, too threatened by the
questions...)

What happens when a person has a
need for sex but he has no "right" to it, even
if he is willing to buy it?

What happens when a child, teenager
or adult has a need for a hug, but has no
"right" to one? And how could we make it a
"right" and legally force others to give hugs
so everyone's right to hugs would be satisfied?

What happens when someone has a
need for emotional support, but no legal
"right" to it?

What happens when someone has the
need for intelligent answers, but has no
"right" to them?

What happens when a customer has a
need for restitution from a company but she has no legal
"right" to it according to existing laws?

What happens when we try to write
laws and policy statements including certain specific
"rights" but excluding others?

Who decides what our
"rights" are?

What happens when people have the
same rights but different needs? - People in very broad
groups have the same rights. But their individual needs
can be quite different.

What happens when there is a
conflict between a person's needs and their rights?

What emotional "rights"
does a person have? Do I have a "right" to feel
understood? Do I have a "right" to understand?
Do I have a "right" to feel respected? Loved?
Admired? Helpful? Accepted?

Notes to myself

ex

do I value understanding because I
need it or need it because I value it. both

we value status symbols and think
we need them

9:12am- what rights does a society
have? **

what is the difference between a
person's needs and their rights?

Or their needs, their desires, and
their rights?

What is a person entitled to? Who
ensures that the entitlements are provided?

Where do you direct your attention
when a right is unmet?

Whose responsibility is it to see
that your rights are met? And whose
responsibility is it that your needs are met?

I once found something called the
"Relationship Bill of Rights".

Take a look at this list and ask
yourself:

- Would it be more helpful to call
these needs?

- Who is responsible if the rights
in this bill of rights are not met?

- Who can you call to complain to
if they are not met?

Relationship
Bill of Rights

1. I have the right to be
treated with dignity and respect.

2. I have the right to be
free from psychological or physical abuse.

3. I have the right to
proper notice and negotiation prior to the
relationship being terminated.

4. I have the right to
experience my own thoughts and feelings.

5. I have the right to tell
my partner honestly and responsibly what I am
thinking and feeling, even if my partner does not
agree, without being condemned for it.

6. I have the right to have
my own life outside of the relationship.

7. I have the right to
continue to learn and grow.

8. I have the right to
openly talk about and seek to resolve
relationship problems.

9. I have the right to end
the relationship if it is not meeting my needs.

10. I recognize that my
partner has the same rights as I do.

From Getting
Love Right, Terrence Gorski.

Notice also that
number 10 says my partner has the same rights as I do,
but each person will have different needs.

When I look at this list I can
picture someone shouting "I have a right to so and
so...." and "It is not fair!" Or maybe
"You can't do that. I have a right to such and
such."

While our needs come from nature,
there really are no such things as "rights" in
nature.

Rights are a completely man-made
fabrication which hark back to the days of kings and
subjects. The kings treated the subjects badly so the
subjects came up with a list of "rights". The
kings agreed to certain "rights" but the kings
still kept the power. To this day governments still
control the power by deciding what the people's
"rights" are.

Here is something from the USA. I
think it is from the Declaration of Independence, but I
have to check since I forgot my 8th grade history lesson
on it!

We hold these truth to be
self-evident that all Men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable Rights, that among these are life,
liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness--that to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among
men....

First, I say there is no
"Creator," so this nullifies one of the most
basic premises/assumptions of the government of the USA.
Also, I say there are no inalienable rights, even in
nature. For example, we all die, so there is no right to
life. We can be imprisoned, so there is no right to
liberty, and if we are dead or imprison, we certainly
have little chance of pursuing happiness. So the entire
beautiful, poetic statement is nothing more than an
unrealistic ideal. This fact goes a long way to explain
the problems in the USA of so many people feeling
entitled and looking for answers in the wrong places.

Another example of the confusion of
rights and needs

This is from the book Toxic
Parents, by Susan Forward.

Children have basic
inalienable rights--to be fed, clothed,
sheltered, and protected. But along with
these physical rights, they have the right to
be nurtured emotionally, to have their
feelings respected, and to be treated in ways
that allow them to develop a sense of
self-worth.

They
also have a right:

... to make mistakes,
to be disciplined without being physically or
emotionally abused.

... to be children. To
spend their early years being playful,
spontaneous, and irresponsible.

p 31

Here we see one of the problems
with confusing needs and rights. The author states that
children have certain basic rights. But in her definition
of toxic parents she speaks only of the children's and
the parents needs. Here is how she describes "toxic
parents":

"significantly
impaired in their own emotional health;
unavailable to meet their children's needs;
expect and demand that the children meet the
parents needs."

The author can't say
"unavailable to meet the children's rights."
This wouldn't make sense. It also wouldn't make sense to
say that the parents demand that the children meet the
parents rights. We don't meet rights. We don't fill
rights. We just "have" them.

One person can't fill another
person's rights. But does this mean a person's needs are
unfillable?

According to common English usage,
I can deny you of your rights. I can peer into your
window when you are undressing and rob you of your right
to privacy. But we don't talk much about denying a
person's needs. We don't say he denied me of my need
for privacy.

We also talk about
"violating" someone's rights. And we talk about
"revoking" someone's rights.

I am not sure what these terms mean
exactly. To deny someone of something is something like
taking it away from someone. It is also something like
stopping a person from obtaining something. I am not sure
what violating a right is like.

I do know that we don't talk about
violating someone's needs or revoking someone of their
needs. We can't take a person's need away from them. We
can stop them from getting their need met, but we can't
take the need away.

Consider a teacher and a student
who wants to get up and get a drink of water. The teacher
can take away the student's right to get up, leave class
and get a drink of water, but she can't take away his
need for the water.

The State, both in its genesis and
by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is
not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea
that the individual has no rights except those that the
State may provisionally grant him. -- Albert J. Nock

Every child has an inalienable
right to be bonded in welcoming arms, kindly initiated
into a caring culture, allowed to play freely in the
senses and imagination. -- Sam Keen

I just checked the a copy
of a summary of the United Nations Rights of Children for
the word "needs." Nowhere was it found I had
looked over some UN pages before to see if they talked
about needs, or emotional needs in particular and found
they had almost no mention of either one.

This reminds me that there
is a lot of work to do in changing the mindset from one
of "rights" to "needs".

S. Hein
May 14, 2007
Buenos Aires

Note to Steve - this was
linked to cara1.htm but I am not sure why.. also that
page is not complete.

Crystal is a teen who has tried to
kill herself. She has been ordered to live in what is
called a treatment center. When she arrived there she was
given a list of her rights. But she was never asked to
give them a list of her needs. Also, to the best of my
knowledge, no one else has ever given them a list of
Crystal's needs either.

What happens when there is a
conflict between her needs and her rights?

In my experience, her needs go
unmet, and this creates an infinite number of problems
for both people like Crystal, and for the rest of
society.

S. Hein
August 23, 2007
Stockholm

Reading someone their rights

- If our rights our inalienable,
then why do we need someone to read them to us?

- Who makes up these lists? And,
importantly, why do they make them? To help us or to
control us?

Some of my early thinking about
rights in the USA

-- July 23, 1999 from my journal
writing

I suppose fires were one way of
determining who was responsible and who wasn't a million
years ago. Because it is power. As I have said in my
journal many times, give someone power and see what they
do with it. But don't give it to them too quickly. You
don't give a monkey a machine gun if he can't use a
pistol responsibly. (this is also why we don't let kids
play with matches- so all of history mankind has been
concerned about access to, distribution, use and abuse of
power.

What we have done is given too many
people too much power too quickly. **

And we have told them it is their
"right" to have it! What a mess we have made,
we humans, we intelligent humans. I wonder what TJ would
say if he came back today? (Thomas Jefferson)

thinking more about rights...

Voting rights for example. Would we
let a group of uneducated people vote on whether to blow
up another country with nuclear weapons? No. But how much
voting power do we give to people? The power to decide
who will be the President is a lot of power. Too much, I
believe. First we need to see what they have done with
the power they already have. **

aug 2001 - does every child have a
right to water? Most will say yes. Next question. How
much water does he have a right to? And does every child
need as much water as every other child? Are everyone's
needs equal?

I was talking to someone yesterday
about how children and teenagers have few legal rights.
This made me wonder what would happen if you no legal
rights at all. For a quick answer to this question we
could consider what life was like for black slaves in
America.

How much water does a child have a
right to? The answer most people would give is "As
much as it needs."

How does a child know what its
needs are? Its body tells it. But how does it know what
its rights are? Its parents tell it.

How do you know what your emotional
and physical needs are? Your body tells you. How do you
know what your rights are? Somebody else tells you.

Who knows what your needs are? Who
knows what your rights are?

The UN has a list of rights for
children. So does the UN know what your child needs?

I have been thinking about rights vs. needs
for a long time - since about 1995. I haven't done much
writing on it but sometimes I think it may be one of the
most important contributions I can make to improving
society. I haven't done much to publicize my thoughts
about rights vs. needs, but I want to at least write a
little more about it today.

The
other day I was talking with Jerren about a suicidal 17 year old in the USA. He
said it seemed like she had virtually the same rights as
a 5 year old child.

This helped me see that there is
another problem with confusing rights and needs. It is
the problem of what happens when a person's needs change
but their rights remain the same.

The 17 year old has very different
needs now than she did when she was 5. But it seems that
the laws in the USA treat her almost the same as if she
were still 5. I think this is true in most countries
around the world. But in some countries 16 year olds have
more "rights" than 16 year olds do in the USA.
For example, I believe 16 year olds in England, Australia
and Canada are legally free to move away from their
parents. In other words they have the "right"
to decide where they want to live, with the exception of
living in another country.

I don't think a 16 year old in any
country can get a passport without their parent's
permission. So if a 16 or 17 year old has the need to
live in another culture, it doesn't matter. What matters
is whether they have a legal right to get a passport. Or
more simply put, it doesn't matter if they have a need
for more freedom. Their needs are always less important
to the people who make the laws and control the weapons
and jails than are their "rights."

Telling someone "I have a right to.." means
nothing if the person you say it to has power over you
and doesn't agree.

If you realize you have needs, it will be easier for
you to understand others also have needs. It will be
easier to consider their needs and work towards some
mutually agreeable solutions which satisfied your needs
and their needs than if you just say "I have a right
to such and such."

If, before a boxing match, one younger
boxer says to the older champion, "I have a right to
the title of World Champion," it would make little
or no sense. The older boxer might understandably say,
"You must fight for it. You must earn it."

Needs, however, are not earned. You are born with
needs. Not rights.

If you are not born in France, you have no
"rights" to the things the French government
gives you, such as a French passport.

On an Island

It would make no sense to stand alone
on an island and shout "I have a right to
food!"

Needs are not earned.

The right to learn - from the Detroit HS video. The
school is sending teens home if they are a few minutes
late, thus denying them of the "right" to
learn. But the school can say, "It is a privilege,
not a right."

Then you are left to arguing or
debating about what is a right and what is a privilege.
In the end, those with the most power are most likely to
prevail at the end of the day. But no matter what they
call something, it doesn't take away a person's need for
it.

A society must meet the natural human needs of young
people or that society will self-destruct with time.
Playing word games, such as saying "No, it is a
privilege" will only last so long. In the end,
nature will ultimately guide us to know our true,
natural, uncorrupted, and unmanipulated needs.

From his speech ---Im really pissed that kids
who do try to come to school but show up a few minutes
late get sent home, given suspensions, and denied their
right to learn. Were being pushed out before we
ever get in.

May 2012

Some people say that if someone has broken
a law or committed a crime then they "give up their
rights" to such and such. But it doesn't make sense
to say a person "gives up his needs" for so and
so. That person still has the same needs, along with more
if they are arrested, jailed, fined etc.

Right or need?

All children have the right
to do the following:

Go to the toilet when needed.

Have drinking water available.

Move the body when needed.

Learn to take care of personal needs.

Learn and process emotions through play.

Learn through exploration, trial, and error.

Make mistakes and not be judged or shamed.

Learn at a personal pace.

Fully understand a subject before being tested.

Not to be tested involuntarily. Instead, share
knowledge by free choice, only when ready to
receive feedback on learning progress.

Not to be punished. Instead, children should be
respectfully encouraged to become more
self-disciplined.

Not to be compared with peers. Instead,
acknowledged as an individual student with
individual talents, opinions, and
characteristics.

Not to be judged for being different.

Right to bear arms vs need to defend ourselves.

Found
this... We have the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms and
Defend Ourselves"

--

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule
in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a
whole nation of arms, as the blackest. Gandhi

We could change that to... "depriving a whole
nation of it's ability to defend itself." And extend
it to "ability to protest." and to "feel
any negative feelings." Or "express any
negative feelings" or "act upon any negative
feelings."

Example, if the goal is to buld the pyramid, nothing
opposing that goal is permitted. Any oposition is
punished or eliminated.

We are motivated by needs, not rights

You can take away rights. In some countries, such as
the USA, important legal documents, such as the xxx of
the USA states that rights are "unalienable".
In other words, they can't be taken away. But we simply
have to consider a prisoner to realize that rights can be
taken away.

Needs on the other hand, are filled, not
given, granted, taken away. You can take away a person's
right to something, but not his or her need for it.

Jan 2015 - Something from my journal (S. Hein)

Most of the world's national borders are a
result of violence, killing and what the British called
the law of conquest.

So I find this from wiki - banned me for
life - pedia

The right of conquest is the
right of a conqueror to territory taken by force of
arms. It was traditionally a principle of
international law which has in modern times gradually
given way until its proscription after the Second
World War when the crime of war of aggression was
first codified in the Nuremberg Principles and then
finally, in 1974, as a United Nations resolution
3314.

The article also says

the right was traditionally accepted
because the conquering force, being by definition
stronger than any lawfully entitled governance which
it may have replaced, was therefore more likely to
secure peace and stability for the people, and so the
Right of Conquest legitimises the conqueror towards
that end.

What? Who would believe this? This is
like saying the guy who is most violent can have the
"right" to the girl he wants to have sex with
and then it is not rape because it has been
"legitimized." S. Hein

Truth.
Is the truth important? I would say it i. So let's see
what happen when we try a couple of searches.

"Do people have a right to the truth?" 0
Results as of today in Google.

"Do people have a right to know the truth?"
4 Results as of today in Google.

So what this tells me is not many people have thought
about this question.

There were just a few results for "do
people need to know the truth", but at
least there were some.

--

I thought of this when I was thinking about Delma who was evicted from her house,
and put in a holding cell, with no "right" to
talk to her partner or family. I keep wondering why. Why
she was selected. Why so many other familes are not being
evicted. Why her? Why wasn't she allowed to talk to her
partner or son when they went to visit her?

Why was she only given 24 hours to leave her house?

I believe people need satisfying answers. I have
talked about this in my writing abou "intelligent
answers." Some people might be satisfied with lies.
But in general I would say we need truthful answers and
we need to know the truth to make healthy decisions and
to solve problems. Yet it is another of the many things
we need but don't have a "right" to. I can't
for example, force or demand the judge to answer my
questions, nor to force him to answer truthfully. I could
try but that would be very complicated. This reminds me
that governments have made things complicated. I don't
think human relationships need to be so complicated.

I really wonder, ,what if we had all been raised in
cultures with helpful, caring governments, not
controlling ones? not abusive ones?